Animals

If it comes to keeping the common hippopotamus (Hippopotamus amphibius), one of the most important zoos in Europe is Ostrava Zoo in the Czech Republic. It is not only so because they have been keeping this species since 1967 without a break and 32 hippo calves were born there during this time, but also because the European Studbook (ESB) of this species has been kept here since 2006. Since the hippo is such a dominant species for Ostrava Zoo, it appears in the logo of the zoo since 2004. What’s more, the logo also appears in the design of the facade of the Tanganyika Pavilion, the home of the hippos. Besides all these, there is a hippo calf living in Ostrava Zoo at present, that, despite being more than a year old now, is still one of the favourites of the visitors of this Czech zoo.

The success of a mixed-species exhibit depends on how we can take general animal husbandry criteria into account in more complex ways in comparison with a single-species exhibit. Those general rules that are important in animal exhibitry are still valid to a greater extent when presenting a multi-species captive environment. As many articles and other publications deal with the subject of general advantages and disadvantages of the mixed-species exhibits, instead of this, here I will assemble a detailed list of mixed exhibits involving at least one member of Ursidae.

Tigers have been popular since ancient times when they were kept in royal menageries and animal collections. Their popularity also continues throughout the 250-year history of modern zoos, as today, considering only the ISIS database, more than 1700 tigers live in 800 zoos all over the world. If we focus on the popularity of tigers, the success of white tigers is indisputable. Let us now examine the background of the success of these tigers, taking into account the positive and negative aspects.

Altogether 4 Golden jackal (Canis aureus) puppies came out of the burrow in June 2014 in NaturZoo Rheine, Germany. This species being rare enough in zoos made the news interesting worldwide. In addition, they were born in an enclosure that they shared with another carnivore species: the sloth bear (Melursus ursinus). Bears and jackals together? It looks interesting, let’s investigate this kind of mixing and their zoo habitat!